Tenderloin murder case unravels

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Well, there weren’t a lot of angels to be found at 4 a.m. Oct. 1, 2008, on a Tenderloin street corner.

According to San Francisco prosecutors, 65-year-old suspect Leroy Brown, apparently mad about being sold $10 worth of fake crack, went after the 43-year-old man who had peddled the stuff, Eric Robinson. Robinson, a long-time felon and drug dealer and surely no saint, was stabbed to death.

Although prosecutors had surveillance video of the events leading up to the slaying at Ellis and Taylor streets, most of what they brought into court came from people who had a criminal record, admitted to being high that morning, or both.

Prosecutors were seeking a murder conviction, the defense outright acquittal. On Thursday, the jury found Brown guilty of involuntary manslaughter, an apparent compromise that neither side could fathom.

“The evidence shows that Mr. Brown was acting in self-defense,” said the defense attorney, deputy public defender Raju Manohar. “The jury apparently compromised with a verdict that doesn’t have evidentiary support.”

A juror who spoke after the verdict without giving his name said it simply: “This is San Francisco.

“We were kind of split,” he said, adding that it was a struggle for him to persuade some on the panel that Brown was guilty of anything. “This was the best we could do,” he said.

Brown’s age was “definitely a factor” in the jury’s reluctance to come back with a murder conviction, he said. “And the victim wasn’t the sweetest guy in the world.”

Scot Clark, the prosecutor, acknowleged the jury’s predicament but said the evidence was clear.

“Involuntary manslaughter is for an accident. This wasn’t an accident — this was an intentional act,” Clark said.

“In this case, you had a sympathetic defendant and a particularly reprehensible victim. They had sympathy for an old guy addicted to drugs in the Tenderloin.”

In his closing argument, Clark told jurors that Brown had robbed Robinson of any shot at redemption.

“There’s a culture in the Tenderloin,” he said outside court. “It’s cannibalistic. They victimize each other with the hopes of getting high.”